Founder chief executives are a different breed. Just ask Jamie Pherous, the founder and CEO of Corporate Travel Management, who ranks ninth on the 2018 Rich Bosses list with a fortune of $507 million.

When the global financial crisis hit in 2008, Pherous could see that while his business was travelling OK, his staff were doing it tough. He made a quick and, he says, easy decision. "I had no problem cutting my bonus and giving it to staff to help them through a tough year."

Pherous points to CTM's present bonus structure as an example of how he takes a long-term view of the business.

Where relatively short-term financial measures dominate the bonus structure that might be set by a typical non-founding CEO, Pherous' focus on protecting CTM's culture means that half the staff's bonuses are tied to measures that track both staff engagement and client satisfaction.

The share price of David Teoh’s TPG Telecom has fallen by more than 10 per cent since January 1 following a double-digit fall in profit for the six months to December. Teoh remains confident in the telco’s future, betting that a renewed push into mobile phones and 5G spectrum will pay off. He and wife Vicky Teoh both hold large stakes in TPG, which was established in 1986 as Total Peripherals Group after their family moved to Australia from Malaysia. TPG floated with market capitalisation of $45 million in 2001 and is now worth more than $5 billion.

The co-founder of fund manager Magellan Financial Group, Douglass oversees an empire that looks after more than $65 billion of investor funds. He listed the company in 2006 with fellow fund manager Chris Mackay, who now runs offshoot MFF Capital Partners. Magellan shares are trading at more than 20 times their $1 issue price. Douglass maintains a large shareholding, which was boosted by the 2016 conversion of 10.6 million class B shares to ordinary Magellan shares. He had been awarded the class B shares as a result of a deal in which Magellan took over listed investment company New Privateer Holdings in 2008. Douglass was able to convert the class B shares to Magellan stock after staying with the company past 2012.

The bulk of Murdoch’s wealth is found in the NASDAQ-listed 21st Century Fox, which was spun out of News Corporation in 2013. A long-time billionaire and a US citizen since 1985, Murdoch also has a large stake in News Corporation. It maintains an ASX listing and is controlled by Murdoch and his family, and primarily holds newspaper and media assets. The News share price has risen about 15 per cent in 12 months, despite concerns about the future of newspapers.

A one-time musician who repaired guitars for bands such as AC/DC and The Angels, Richard White became a billionaire for the first time this year thanks to the rapid success of his WiseTech. White established the company in 1994 to provide software and systems to logistics firms and it has been a big success since floating in 2016. Its share price is worth more than three times its value of two years ago, and White’s large stake has surged as a result. Under his leadership, the company has made dozens of small acquisitions around the world, including 10 in the past year.

Jamie Pherous founded Corporate Travel Management in 1994 with just two employees in Brisbane. Twenty-four years later it is an established global presence in an extremely competitive corporate travel market, and enjoys market darling status with investors. Pherous took a risk floating CTM in 2010, when initial public offerings were still out of favour following the global financial crisis two years earlier. The company raised $21 million in the transaction, but is now worth more than $2.5 billion.

Seven Group Holdings shares have surged by more than 70 per cent, providing a big boost to the wealth of executive chairman Kerry Stokes. Though the billionaire is best known as a media magnate via television’s Seven Network, his exposure to the mining sector accounts for more of his wealth these days. SGH holds a 35 per cent stake in the listed Seven West Media, but the majority of its earnings come from mining services assets such as WesTrac and Coates Holdings. The performance of those accounts for the rapidly rising SGH share price. The group’s shares are trading about 20 times the value of its $2 issue price when it floated back in 1993.

Michael Heine and his son Matt both place highly on the Rich Bosses list after the stellar float last November of their wealth management platform Netwealth. The duo are joint managing directors, though the elder Heine owns 75 per cent of the private investment company that controls their Netwealth stake. He says his company is well placed to take advantage of the backlash against the banks due to the royal commission and that disillusioned advisers are leaving the banks to take up Netwealth’s services. Netwealth shares are up about 50 per since its listing. Heine’s remuneration will be revealed when Netwealth publishes its first annual report as a listed company later this year.

The value of Gerry Harvey’s stake in Harvey Norman has taken a hit this year, after a weaker than expected half-year result for the electrical and household goods retail giant he has been at the helm of for more than three decades. There have also been investor concerns about Harvey’s strategy of spending investor funds on loss-making ventures such as dairy farms. But the billionaire remains confident in his stock, saying investors should be buying more of it and not selling out yet. Harvey is executive chairman of the chain and his wife and chief executive, Katie Page, also owns a stake big enough to place on this year’s Rich Bosses list.

It is an end of an era for Kerr Neilson, who on July 1 stepped down as chief executive of Platinum Asset Management. But he still holds an executive director role (fellow Rich Bosses member Andrew Clifford has stepped in as CEO) and maintains a large shareholding in the business he founded in 1994. Platinum now manages more than $27 billion of investor funds, invested in equity markets around the world. Neilson floated the firm in 2007. Its shares are worth about one-third more than then but have fallen about 10 per cent this year, partly due to concern about Neilson’s departure from the top job.

Graham Turner says he has a good decade ahead of him at the helm of Flight Centre, which he founded almost four decades ago with Bill James and Geoff Harris. Those two are gone from the company’s executive ranks but maintain a similar shareholding to that of Turner. Those holdings have been maintained since Flight Centre floated on the ASX in 1995, when the internet had barely been used as a travel booking tool and Turner’s company dominated with its “bricks and mortar” shopfronts. He has since defied predictions of doom, and Flight Centre shares in late May hit an all-time high, taking Turner’s stake close to the $1 billion mark.

"That's become trendy but we've been doing that for years," he says. "I think when you're a founder you tend to overly focus on culture. Your business has been around for a long time and you want to be around for a long time. We're still a sophisticated company, but there's passion in the business because we care."

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It has been a successful mindset for Pherous and his CTM shareholders. CTM's share price is up 10 per cent in the past 12 months, against an 8 per cent rise in the All Ordinaries index over the same time and a 4.8 per cent increase in the ASX 300 – from which the Rich Bosses list is drawn.

The Pherous mindset features in most of the companies headed by this year's Rich Bosses, the list of the wealthiest managers and executive directors from the ASX 300 according to the value of their shareholding. About two-thirds of the list are founders, and most of their wealth is tied to their shareholding – often held for the long term – rather than short-term pay.

Pherous has a $507 million shareholding but his take-home pay for the 2017 financial year (the latest available figure) was $679,319. In a era of multimillion-dollar wages for the country's top executives, Pherous is one of six of the top 20 Rich Bosses whose annual take-home pay is less than $1 million.

Another is Graham Turner, the co-founder of Flight Centre. He places seventh on the Rich Bosses with shares in the company valued at $934.6 million, but his remuneration in 2017 was $675,000.

The average pay for the Rich Bosses is about $2.1 million. Flight Centre shares have surged 70 per cent in the past 12 months, and the average share price increase of the companies featuring on the Rich Bosses is 49 per cent. Total wealth on the list is $22 billion and the average wealth per person is $219 million.

The message for investors could be to look for companies with founders that hold a big chunk of their wealth in their firm and who intend to stick around for a long time. Yes, it is a case of the founders' way or the highway – there are few examples in recent corporate history of founders being kicked out by disgruntled shareholders – but sticking with them is usually rewarding.

Take billionaire Kerry Stokes, who tops this year's Rich Bosses with a share fortune of $4.03 billion from his Seven Group Holdings.

At first glance, the company's mixture of exposure to the media sector via its 35 per cent stake in Seven West Media and its mining services companies such as Coates Hire and WesTrac could be considered confusing and not ideal. But Stokes has made it work, with SGH shares surging by about 70 per cent in the past year. This has boosted his wealth, and that of his investors.

Flight Centre's Turner has consistently overlooked short-term worries about the company's future, ploughing on as many wrote off the company as a relic of the bricks-and-mortar era of travel retail that would be forced out of business by travel booking websites.

Seek chief executive Andrew Bassat is another founder CEO who is on the record as saying these leaders have a unique advantage over most CEOs in that they can sell their long-term vision to investors.

That is something Bassat has been able do at Seek, where he has been prepared to make big investments that hit short-term profits but set the company up for growth.

He says getting the balance between short- and long-term priorities is getting more difficult in a market riven with distractions. "It's one of the reasons I have sympathy for CEOs generally. There are so many things that make that harder."

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Which is why, perhaps, behind every good CEO is at least one other long-time executive or wage slave who has supported their boss for years or even decades and been handsomely rewarded with shares.

A startling 21 companies have multiple entries on the Rich Bosses list, led by some guns from fast-growing zinc miner New Century Resources, which is building its Century Zinc project in Queensland.

The company contributes three members to the list, including Young Rich List member and corporate director Tolga Kumova, 40. His shares in New Century are worth $21 million, while managing director Patrick Walta, 35, and executive chairman Evan Cranston, 36, have shares worth $39.4 million and $38.7 million respectively.

'We're still a sophisticated company, but there's passion in the business because we care,' says Jamie Pherous, chief executive of Corporate Travel Management.
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Pherous says it is important to have good sounding boards from outside the business, including directors and other senior managers, to ward off the danger that a founder-CEO might not be receptive to outside views. "When I see other [founders] that fail, it's often because they think what they knew 20 years ago still applies today."

For all his talk about focusing on long-term issues, he acknowledges that the underlying business does need to be run hard. Pherous says the CEO of CTM's Australian business, Laura Ruffles, who is also global chief operating officer, has the job of handling the day-to-day operations, allowing Pherous to focus on two to three years out.

"A lot of my role is ensuring our leaders bring that balanced view to the business."

Pherous is joined on the Rich Bosses by the CEO of CTM's North American business, Chris Thelen, who has $22.4 million worth of company shares.

Then there is Macquarie CEO Nicholas Moore, the highest non-founder on the list in 15th position with share wealth of $253.2 million, and the group head of Macquarie Asset Management Shemara Wikramanayake, who is worth $80.6 million.

Hupert and Hall are worth $221.8 million and $221.5 million respectively on the Rich Bosses. They founded the business as a joint venture in 1983 and listed it on the ASX in 2000 at $1.15 per share. Today those shares are trading at more than $7.